Facebook for iPad discovered hidden in existing iPhone app

Facebook's official native iPad application, rumored to be released soon, has been discovered hidden inside of the currently available iPhone-only software on the App Store.

Calling the pre-release software "very good," TechCrunch offered a look at the iPad application hidden within the iPhone software on Monday. The concealed software was discovered and its iPad-compatible mode was enabled by making slight modifications.

Author MG Siegler said he's unsure if the hidden software is the version that will actually ship for the iPad, but he has reason to believe it is "at least very close" to the final product. Most of it is said to be written in HTML5.

"Unlike the iPhone app — which even its creator is complaining about now as being stale — the Facebook iPad app uses a left-side menu system that can be accessed by the touch of a button or the flick of the iPad screen," he wrote.

"The app also makes great use of the pop-overs (overlay menus) found in other iPad apps. When you flip the iPad horizontally, the list of your online friends appears and you can chat with them as you do other things on Facebook."

The native iPad application was revealed through a minor update to the iPhone application, version 3.4.4, that was issued this week. The update was originally characterized as featuring a handful of bug fixes.

Earlier this month, Facebook announced it had partnered with Skype to bring video calling to the social networking service. During that presentation, Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg promised his company would launch more products in the coming weeks and months, and referred to the period as Facebook's "launching season" of 2011.

In June, The New York Times reported that Facebook was set to launch an official iPad application on Apple's App Store in "coming weeks." The software was said to feature a "slick design" tailored for the multi-touch interface of the iPad, including overhauled Facebook Chat and Groups features, and also allowing the ability to shoot and upload photos and videos.

Facebook is also said to be at work on a secret HTML5-based Web application platform dubbed "Project Spartan." One rumor from June claimed that Apple has been helping Facebook to the development of the project.

Facebook's official native iPad application, rumored to be released soon, has been discovered hidden inside of the currently available iPhone-only software on the App Store.
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The concealed software was discovered and its iPad-compatible mode was enabled by making slight modifications.
... Most of it is said to be written in HTML5.

I don't buy it. How do you make a "slight modification" to a signed binary? Are they saying the decompiled it, edited the code, then recompiled it and ran it on a jailbreaked device? Even so, written in HTML5? In an app that came originally from the app store?

I don't buy it. How do you make a "slight modification" to a signed binary? Are they saying the decompiled it, edited the code, then recompiled it and ran it on a jailbreaked device? Even so, written in HTML5? In an app that came originally from the app store?

Nope, I call BS.

There is a switch you set when you build an app to say if it's for the pad, phone or both. I suspect they just cracked it using the usual piracy tools and set the flag to pad (or both). Then when you run it on the pad, it will know to use its custom pad UI instead of the phone one. Simple.

There is a switch you set when you build an app to say if it's for the pad, phone or both. I suspect they just cracked it using the usual piracy tools and set the flag to pad (or both). Then when you run it on the pad, it will know to use its custom pad UI instead of the phone one. Simple.

That's when you build it. It's not gonna be there after it's built, ready to be switched again. And the cracking just removes the DRM and such. Building against both is simple, but from code, not from a compiled binary.

That's when you build it. It's not gonna be there after it's built, ready to be switched again.

Sure it is. That's how people got some of Apple's iPhone-only apps to run on the iPad when it first came out.

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And the cracking just removes the DRM and such. Building against both is simple, but from code, not from a compiled binary.

Strange, then, that there's even a .plist specifically for use by the OS itself that can make iOS 5 beta think that it's the retail version, bypassing the setup application and getting non-devs to the Springboard, huh?

Sure it is. That's how people got some of Apple's iPhone-only apps to run on the iPad when it first came out.

Strange, then, that there's even a .plist specifically for use by the OS itself that can make iOS 5 beta think that it's the retail version, bypassing the setup application and getting non-devs to the Springboard, huh?

Guess you're wrong.

Here's something to try, seeing as you know more than me, why not use your knowledge to explain how it might be done rather than just prove me wrong. I'm happy to be wrong, it was conjecture on my part, but I'm always ready to learn.

Here's something to try, seeing as you know more than me, why not use your knowledge to explain how it might be done rather than just prove me wrong. I'm happy to be wrong, it was conjecture on my part, but I'm always ready to learn.

"Just" proving you wrong? So you admit you're wrong. There's nothing more to say.

You can modify plists to tell applications what devices they can run on. There are tutorials to do this on several sites.

Wow, what kind of attitude is that? Like I said I'm happy to be wrong, but I thought the point of a forum like this was to talk about stuff, not score cheap points (although how you score points off someone who isn;t playing your daft game isn't clear)

So you start by ending the conversation because you've proven me "wrong", and then you top it off you effectively tell me to go googling something you haven't even half explained so I can prove myself wrong on your behalf because you're either too idle or full of shit to do it yourself. At least the guy above sent a link.